Given the recent scandal concerning Facebook and Cambridge Analytica many people are reconsidering their relationship with Facebook. By all means, delete your FB account, you’ll find it’s not easy as they prefer you to “deactivate” your account. I’m not deleting Facebook, because it’s a useful way of keeping in touch with friends, particularly overseas. But, please go into the settings and restrict all your privacy settings to “friends only.” Deny access to your contacts. Then remove all 3rd party apps that have access to your Facebook, then lock everything else down to friends only. Remove all your personal info, birthday, school, Uni, workplace, home address, mobile number, etc… yeah it takes a while. Then set location to “only when you use the app”. Finally, open Facebook enjoy your friends’ posts and then kill it every-time you finish, never let it run in the background.

A couple of weeks ago I was approached by a journalist, David Farrier. He had a very interesting story and was looking for my AI opinion. He had come across a company in Christchurch that allegedly had created a groundbreaking AI, called Zach AI, that could create patient-doctor consultation notes. The AI had been created by Uni drop-out Albi Whale and the company went by the unlikely name of “Terrible.” Did I think this was for real? I first went online and could find no record of an A. Whale ever publishing at an AI conference or in a journal. It seemed unlikely that a single person could beat teams of researchers at Google, Amazon, Apple and IBM so I asked some colleagues working at these companies if they’d ever come across A. Whale or Zach AI. All came up blank.You can read David Farrier’s (long) article here and a recent follow-up piece here. It would seem that scammers are jumping on the AI band waggon.